


404

by LittleLinor



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor
Genre: Chaos Path, Gen, Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-26
Updated: 2013-10-26
Packaged: 2017-12-30 11:57:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1018325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleLinor/pseuds/LittleLinor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war rages on, and Naoya, as always, sits in front of a computer screen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	404

You sit in front of a screen. Like you have for most of your life, like you were while you were building, calculating, slowly piecing together the tools to screw destiny over. The real goals, the real enemy, are out of your reach as always, so here you are, poking at one end of the chain, hoping that somehow someone else will act.

You sit in front of a screen, while the Shomonkai take to the streets, preaching and helping and building sentiment. You know Atsuro is doing his part in the shadows, he came by a few days ago, face dark with worry (really, he should know better, you've been through much worse) and maybe a bit of bitterness behind that mask of his, and told you his idea, and before you found the words to thank him for having thought of something that, in your preoccupation, you hadn't, he left.

You sit in front of a screen, in front of this interface you designed yourself, and you overestimated yourself, underestimated how much you would come to despise it, underestimated your need for more. There is more to your thirst than revenge, and now that you've had him on your side (for two days, _two days_ ) you can see that you should have been more thorough, burried more communication features in the code. Learned more from your own ideas, from how important human feelings are, from the very reason you were able to harness energy from the internet. The human heart is both powerful and pathetically weak, splintering itself to reach over to people, scattering little shards all over conversations, letters, emails. You should know this more than anyone, and yet. You had thought that revenge, that _action_ would be enough.

You sit in front of a screen, as he stands in front of God, and isn't this such beautiful irony, that even after your punishment things are back to this again? It's your revenge unfolding, a dream thousands of years old, and yet once more you are out of the picture, out of God's view. A nobody in the grand scheme of things, not good enough to sacrifice, not even worthy of being sacrificed. A tool and a catalyst. And there, facing the hordes of heaven, facing God himself, is your little brother turned cousin (turned brother again), fighting for humanity, fighting for _you_ , fighting for himself the least, in the end. A willing tool and dutiful king, his determination an echo of your hate (and, maybe, of your love), and yet he is the one God deemed worthy to fight, to even look at. But it's no wonder, really. Abel... (and he will learn this, you know, there is only so much you can hope for, and they will stop at nothing to make you pay the price of your treason to the end) Abel has always been the beloved, blessed child.

You sit in front of a screen, and answer a line of text with another line of text, and try not to remember that one way or another, it's probably the last and the best you will get.


End file.
